General British politics discussion thread

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120830640#Comment_120830640

Some local elections already have non FPTP set ups. London assembly uses a vote + list system and London mayor is PR if I remember correctly.

I don't see how Labour would be any more "dead and buried" than the Tories under PR though.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120830634#Comment_120830634

The SNP does seem to have the knack of avoiding political gravity. They'll take a hit but I don't think it will be them back to their pre-2015 position.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120830791#Comment_120830791

Not sure if the relevent legistation has gone through but there has been moves by the government for mayor elections to be moved over to straight FPTP.

Under PR Labour would probably have been supplanted by the SDP in the 1980s.

Timberrrrrrrr

Andrea Jenkyns

Madam deputy speaker, the Magna Carta was issued in June 2015.

Unbelievable 🙈🤣

https://twitter.com/Zero_4/status/1678457821010993170?t=wv2dxqg8MMXPBKImidttkg&s=19

ancapailldorcha

For context, that would be this Andrea Jenkyns:

800 years out. While it amuses me immensely that so few people here know so little of their own history outside of Henry VIII and World War 2, this is a spectacular display of ignorance, even by Conservative standards.

For no reason whatsoever, here's an excerpt from an Irish Times article about Jacob Rees-Mogg's ill-considered foray into history writing:

But its early readers have not been persuaded that the project was time well spent. The historian AN Wilson, whose book The Victorians was published in 2002, wrote in the Times that Rees-Mogg’s effort was “anathema to anyone with an ounce of historical, or simply common, sense”. Describing the work as “a dozen clumsily written pompous schoolboy compositions”, he said it claimed to be a work of history but was in fact “yet another bit of self-promotion by a highly motivated modern politician”.

On the chapter about the conquest of Sindh, in what is now Pakistan, by the 19th-century British general Charles Napier, Wilson wrote: “At this point in the book you start to think that the author is worse than a twit. By all means let us celebrate what was great about the Victorians, but there is something morally repellent about a book that can gloss over massacres and pillage on the scale perpetrated by Napier.”

If the book’s critical savaging fails to impede Rees-Mogg’s further political rise, Sandbrook’s review does offer a silver lining to those who find him objectionable. “Before I started, the prospect of Rees-Mogg in Downing Street struck me as a ridiculous idea,” he wrote. “But if this is what it takes to stop him writing another book, than I think we should seriously consider paying the price.” – Guardian

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/absolutely-abysmal-critics-rip-apart-jacob-rees-mogg-s-new-book-1.3898239

It's odd that a country that produces such an absurd amount of high quality research and literature about history seems to consume virtually none of said output.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120831911#Comment_120831911

It doesn't matter if the book is sht or sells no copies.

It's just an Oxford thing to have published author on your CV. Just more of the pompous bullsht from that sad little bubble.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120830842#Comment_120830842

Not necessarily, since in a political culture shaped by a different electoral system the Labour party would have behaved differently. They might have been a lot more nimble about moving towards the centre to pick up the votes of centrist Tories alienated by Thatcher.

(Of course, the Tories would also have behaved differently, so the whole conjecture is very speculative.)

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120833303#Comment_120833303

There wouldn't have been so many factions within each party since under proportional Representation they would have been able to split into their own parties with their own platforms to campaign on.

breezy1985

Also the strength of the SDS is massively over played.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120833303#Comment_120833303

I'd expect them to be less disciplined under PR but yes the effect of the voting system is not in isolation.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120837724#Comment_120837724

Depends on what you mean by "disciplined". If the UK had a PR system in the 1980s (and if we assume it had broadly the same party structure as it actually has) Labour would have been incentivised to adopt more centrist positions in order to secure preferences from Lib and SDP voters, to maximise its chances of beating the Tories. You can see that as the electoral system disciplining the Labour party to adopt policies capable of securing wider support from voters - they have to, in order to maximise their chance of winning. In the real world, where the UK has FPTP, Labour is not disciplined in this way, and can adopt more radical (and less popular) policies, relying on the fact that people will vote for them anyway as they are the only feasible alternative to the Tories. You can see this as the electoral system giving Labour more scope to be self-indulgent, and less responsive to the concerns and values of voters.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120839957#Comment_120839957

Blair and Starmer are proof to me that Labour already know they need to be a centrist party. They don't need PR for this as they are already as centrist if not more so that other ruling European centre left parties.

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120840272#Comment_120840272

I think the point is that they are no longer center left and are more center right. Politically it makes sense. Be slightly less extreme than the tories which means everyone even slightly to the left of the Tories has labour as the only realistic option.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120840289#Comment_120840289

That's not the point as I read it. The argument being made is that Labour would be less left under PR.

I'm saying they didn't need PR to move "less left"

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120840333#Comment_120840333

Good point, misread the discussion a bit.

Peregrinus

Labour are centrist when they have a Blair or a Starmer in charge; they are not centrist when they have a Foot or a Corbyn in charge.

Or, perhaps more accurately, Labour centrists dominate when there is a Blair/Starmer leader, but the party still includes leftists; Labour leftists dominate when they have a Foot/Corbyn leader, but the party still includes centrists.

My argument was that a more representative electoral system would require Labour to adopt policies that would maximise their support from voters, which will generally mean more centrist policies, since they maximise support by attracting centrist voters.

The argument may not in fact be very sound; quite possibly a more representative electoral system would free up voters to vote for centrist parties like the Lib Dems (no longer a "wasted vote") and therefore make it harder for Labour to attract centrist voters. So you could argue that the incentive for Labour would in fact be to adopt a clear position as a party of the left, thereby consolidating and maximising the left-wing vote. But very likely then they would only enter government in coalition; the left-wing vote would not be sufficient to put them into government as a single party with majority.

pixelburp

I think I said it before but Starmer is the Joe Biden of UK politics: any other opponent and he'd not be within an a$$' roar of Number 10, but because the Tories have mutated into a collective of inept sociopaths he seems like a sober pair of hands - despite being Ideologically empty.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120840289#Comment_120840289

This is the problem with FPTP. The centre ground is the place to be if the party wants to be the Gov - be it Tory or Labour.

Being populist is the alternative to this strategy, but that has its own dangers, as The Tories are finding out - having purged their centrists.

Now being centrist, and holding the centre ground, means that the extreme wings of voters have nowhere else to go, and settle for the least objectional to them.

In a STV, (especially multi seat) the main two parties would split into factions, but come Gov formation, they will get their favourite policies into the programme for Gov - based on the polling/seat numbers.

Of course, the parties could not just split, but shatter.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120840389#Comment_120840389

Ya but they only win elections with the centrists so they already have to go centrist under FPTP. They don't always do it but they have to if they want to be in government.

Leroy42

Labour is not going to move towards PR, or at least the party itself isn't. Because, as has been alluded to in the posts above, moving away from FPTP gives the smaller parties more say. The likes of Lib Dems, Greens, UKIP (when they were a thing). What that does, and this is true for the Tories as well, is reduce their power.

Look at the recent example of Johnson kicking many Tory MPs out of the party for failing to accept his deal. They literally had nowhere to go. In a PR system, they could have had some impact but Johnson knew full well that they had a choice. Either side with me or lose your seat.

So it is not in the big parties' interest to move towards PR. So even if someone could get them to pledge to run a review or a ref on it, it would simply be a rerun of Brexit in that the lies and fear-mongering would be massive and everything would be done to stop it happening.

Peregrinus

The whole point of the the FPTP system is to maximise the power of the established parties by minimising the power of voters. Naturally, the established parties will not favour any change to this system. It usually takes a significant political crisis that shakes confidence in all the established parties before a country that has FPTP switches to PR.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120840409#Comment_120840409

I would disagree with this. Biden had a plan and is getting things done. Starmer, on the other hand has.... GB Energy and that's about it. Even that's a damp squib with energy prices the way they are. I agree that he'd have been crushed by a competent Tory party and its allies in the press. I've no idea what he'd do with the reins of power or even what he'd like to do.

serfboard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120840289#Comment_120840289

Problem with that approach is that by shifting to the right, the Tories keep moving what becomes the "centre" ground, and Labour stupidly keep following them. Pissing off a load of prospective voters.

Tony Blair lost 2.8 million voters from the General Election in 1997 to the one in 2001. The Leave campaign found them in 2016.

pixelburp

So anyone curious what Robert Jenrick said in parliament, in response to that issue over the Tom & Jerry murals?

Oh. Well. Excuse us: it wasn't what was reported and not wanting to make the children welcome; no no. It was simply concern about the murals not being "age appropriate" for all the teenagers passing through the centre.

I'll say one thing: I bet that took a lot of spitballing behind the scenes at Tory HQ and whoever passes for the Malcolm Tucker within that particular tent. I know this post doesn't quite hit the standards expected of the forum, but this crop of so-called Conservatives are really making it hard to add insightful commentary.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-politics-66164924

mod: no need to personalise your attack on Jenrick

Sam Russell

Not age appropriate for the Tory MPs and Ministers - they are not juvenile enough for them?

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120845722#Comment_120845722

Mickey Mouse is perfect for this government.

salonfire

Is it confirmed Disney give permissions for the murals to be placed in a public place? No? Then he was right to act prudently and ask for their removal.

Just like you cannot start playing music here in public, you'll have the IRMA taking you to court.

That's real life folks, it not all lollipops and candyland.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120855815#Comment_120855815

Firstly, this is not a reason given by the Tories and I'm sure were it credible it would have been said rather than the "age appropriate" waffle. Second, if you've ever seen an ice cream van you'd know full well unauthorised reproductions of Disney properties abound. Or indeed any community centre, to take a more pertinent example.

This is contrarian reaching. We've had two official comments from Tories and neither have fretted over licensing or cease and desist

Water John

Salon, you'd better get onto Trump who keeps using peoples music, without their permission.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120855815#Comment_120855815

That is one of the most pathetic excuses this thread has ever seen.

And there have been some clowns over the years.